Optical Camouflauge

[Zor]

We have all seen Ghost in the Shell and played Halo, so we all know about the idea of Optical Camouflauge. Now here is a question, will it be pratical for a Military to adopt Optical Camouflauge system for it's troopers and vehicles?

The Technology has been pioneered by several University of Tokyo proffesers with some sucsess. Is this the great grand-daddy of USMC Optical Camouflauge suits?

Zor

[Ford Prefect]

I have got to get me one of those.

[dragon]

You should see the new stuff they been working on. Imagine what happens once the military decides to get involved, assuming they already haven't.

[defanatic]

THere are quite a few problems at this stage of development for it to be anything but a novelty, though.

[dragon]

THere are quite a few problems at this stage of development for it to be anything but a novelty, though.

Hell thats true with almost anything new. Even airplanes when first came out were considered a novelty as was the horseless carriage.

[dragon]

Ghetto edit. Usally once someone pioneers a new idea and if its a good idea it will take off. Matter of fact I know the military is working things such as this. While you will this level might not be useful for people it would great for fixed objects or large scale objects. Imagine parking aircraft or tanks under a field covered by these things.

[Mr Bean]

You should see the new stuff they been working on. Imagine what happens once the military decides to get involved, assuming they already haven't.

We are involved. As with all active camo schemes powering it and durability is the problem.

[Admiral Valdemar]

This is such an amazingly old piece of "news" I don't see why it's posted here. The technology is far from useful or practical now since it consists of a projector and special setup with suit to get the required effect from one angle. This does not even approach the therm-optic camo worn by the likes of Maj. Kusanagi, Grey Fox, Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish or your average Yautja warrior. All of those rely on special flexible transistor films that allow imagery to be reproduced accurately from all angles via multiple tiny cameras and give decent lighting to enable at least some form of blending in with the environment. We have the ability to make flexible LCDs and tiny cameras. What we don't have is the type of processing needed for something like this that will sit flush in a suit. We even have IR dampening suits to may infra-red imaging less useful.

[Sea Skimmer]

Most proposals for optical camouflage systems always struck me as being good ways to make yourself brighter then ever to FLIR.

[Admiral Valdemar]

We have nothing capable of rendering the same effect as seen in most SF and be both portable and not so energy intensive. NASA was looking into producing boards that would be portable active camo units for tanks or pillboxes as opposed to the usual webbing and so on. They're less complicated to do if they're simple planar surfaces, not a human being wearing some suit.

[Vendetta]

Most proposals for optical camouflage systems always struck me as being good ways to make yourself brighter then ever to FLIR.

Or to make people wonder 'where is that shadow coming from?'

Even a 'perfect' cloaking system is still going to throw a shadow.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Yes, but since hitting a shadow, or for that matter, looking out for one is typically harder than seeing a fully kitted out infrantryman running around the scrubland, it's better than nothing. Camo today is hardly perfect, but we use it because anything that limits bullets flying your way is a good thing.

[The Kernel]

This is such an amazingly old piece of "news" I don't see why it's posted here. The technology is far from useful or practical now since it consists of a projector and special setup with suit to get the required effect from one angle. This does not even approach the therm-optic camo worn by the likes of Maj. Kusanagi, Grey Fox, Bond's Aston Martin Vanquish or your average Yautja warrior. All of those rely on special flexible transistor films that allow imagery to be reproduced accurately from all angles via multiple tiny cameras and give decent lighting to enable at least some form of blending in with the environment. We have the ability to make flexible LCDs and tiny cameras. What we don't have is the type of processing needed for something like this that will sit flush in a suit. We even have IR dampening suits to may infra-red imaging less useful.

OLED's and a series of high resolution TDMS chips integrated into the panels would do the trick, along with some central electronics for image processing and rendering. The trick is to develop hardware radiosity logic that can examine data from millions of light/color monitors on-the-fly and generate an appropriate camo image at a per-pixel level.

This is not impossible to imagine today, but it requires a few advances in computing that are a fair ways off. First is cheap, durable, high res OLED's and the second is the hardware radiosity chips. If this project were funded well enough, working prototypes could probably be developed within a decade.

[Admiral Valdemar]

OLEDs are a good starter, but they do tend to have a rather limited life next to synthetic ones. Like you and I have said, the main problem is processing this information so the skin can adapt readily and with decent enough accuracy to become useful. You could always have the skin simply become a standard CADPAT/MARPAT pattern for any given background as opposed to rendering the scene perfectly to get near total invisibility.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

OLEDs are a good starter, but they do tend to have a rather limited life next to synthetic ones. Like you and I have said, the main problem is processing this information so the skin can adapt readily and with decent enough accuracy to become useful. You could always have the skin simply become a standard CADPAT/MARPAT pattern for any given background as opposed to rendering the scene perfectly to get near total invisibility.

One can use PLEDs in place of OLEDs, though designing what is essentially a full-body wearable computer that can stand up the same rigors as a soldier in combat while performing non-trivial image processing on very low power will give most hardware engineers the sort of nightmares that end in waking up in a fetal position while whimpering.

[Dahak]

EADS seemingly is in the initial steps to begin and research the construction of a drone using optical camouflage.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Got a link to anything? The only research I've seen decent progress on is the Japanese projector idea mentioned (although not practical as a proper camo system) and the DARPA/NASA idea for the US Army.